Sink or Swim
by AkitaFallow
Summary: From the time she's barely five, Queenie knows something's different because no one else seems to find the world quite as loud as she does, sinking into a tsunami of thoughts and feelings. She has to find some way to keep her head above water, because otherwise she's liable to drown. (So she does, because she's a Goldstein and that's what they do.) / A character study on Queenie.


**A character study on Queenie Goldstein because I still have some feelings about Fantastic Beasts.**

* * *

They don't notice, for the first few years.

They don't notice that she's a little too quiet from the moment she's born, not screaming her discontent to the skies from the second she draws her first breath. Instead, her eyes are big and wide and oddly knowing as she stares around her at the people gathered, at the midwife who's got a huge smile on her face as she proclaims "It's a girl!"

They don't notice how she barely lets out a peep until she sees her mother, and that's when the screams start. And they stop the moment her mother is given a potion to help ease the afterbirth pain and cramping.

When they finally let Porpentina in, let her come and see her new little sister, the baby makes her first sounds other than the screams; she laughs.

Babies are not supposed to laugh at her age.

They label it as a sign of Queenie's undoubtedly high intelligence and think nothing more of it.

* * *

They start to notice a little more when Queenie gets to be four years old.

It starts as a few smaller things, as she grows. She picks up language faster than they ever thought she would, saying her first word just a few days shy of nine months. She starts reading when she's two, quietly sneaking books out of Tina's room and carrying them to her own, hiding under the covers like she's seen her sister do and reading very carefully with a candle she snatched from her mother's stock that no one knows she knows about.

She's walking by the time most children are crawling, leaps and bounds ahead of everyone her age, and they write it off as prodigious, as someone who's clearly got places to be and things to do and isn't going to let her own development stop her.

It doesn't occur to them that perhaps she's not learning it all on her own.

But, when she's four, she starts to chatter more. And that's when they start to notice.

"I like chocolate," she says at the same time as Tina one morning, when their father has offered them a bar he got special for them from the market in the city. "But I prefer dark chocolate." The parroting is almost eerie.

They've known for almost a year that Queenie prefers milk chocolate.

One morning, while sitting on the back porch sipping a cup of tea, her mother is silently musing about the war, and Queenie comes out on the porch to join her.

"I think it's silly that people are fighting at all," she says in her small childish voice in response to nothing, with much more gravity than a child her age should possess. "They're really just fighting for no reason."

When Queenie is five, her parents have their first fight when the children are home.

It's about something small, like it always is. But they usually try to make it happen while the girls are away at a friend's house or when they're busy doing other things. They can't really remember what it's about once Queenie starts screaming from the other room.

There's a moment of pure terror as they wonder what could have possibly happened from just a room away, and then they're both in motion, wands out and hearts pounding as they slam through the door and stop in their tracks.

Queenie is on the floor, her hands on her head and tears streaming down her face as she screams. Tina is hovering over her, eight years old and already so concerned for her sister that she almost looks like she's going to join in the tears.

"What happened?" their father demands as he bends down, his hands trying to pry the five-year-old's hands out of her hair. It looks like she's trying to tear it out, and there's nothing he can do except try and stop her. Their mother is already running diagnostic spells, as she works as a nurse at the local medical ward.

"I can't find anything wrong," she breathes after a moment, and Tina lets out a little sob. Queenie's screams have stopped, but she's now sobbing like she's dying.

"I don't know what happened," Tina cries, her hands going to her own hair in distress. "She was okay, we were playing—and then she just started screaming and I think she's dying!"

"Shh, shh," says their mother, putting an arm around Tina. "It's alright, she's not dying, we just need to go to the hospital and make sure there's nothing wrong."

Queenie is sobbing into her father's lapels, her little face scrunched up with so much pain that there must be something wrong, no matter what their mother's diagnostic spells say.

They Apparate to the hospital, regardless of the consequences, because at this point haste is probably better than anything else.

It isn't the first time Queenie has ever had a breakdown like this, and they always assumed it was because of her rather prodigious brain getting ahead of her. They'd heard of that happening to intelligent children, heard things about thoughts racing too far ahead, difficult to follow and overwhelming. But never has it been this bad, and they're starting to think maybe it's something different.

By the time the doctor has finished with the girl and made his way out to the waiting room, the family is tense and worried.

"What is it?" their mother demands as the doctor approaches, a grim look in his eyes. "Is she alright?"

"Your daughter is fine," the mediwizard assures. "She's resting. It's been awhile since I've seen something like this, but with rest she should be right as rain."

"What's wrong with her?" their father demands, hand tightening on Tina's shoulder in his worry.

"She's just had an overwhelming Legilimency episode, and couldn't quite overcome it."

"Legilimency?" Mama shrieks. "She's been attacked?"

The mediwizard holds up his hands. "Not as such! This was not an outside attack. No one is trying to harm Queenie, I assure you."

"Then what is it?"

* * *

Finding out that your youngest daughter is a natural Legilimens, something that's rare enough that some medical professionals have never even seen a case before, is a shock.

Finding out that she's been that way since the day she was born is even more of one.

"She can't control it?" their mother asks the specialist that the mediwizard has found for them and sent to their house just two days later, when they bring Queenie home and have her resting in her room with Tina on watch. "Not ever?"

The specialist hums quietly. "It's hard to say. Natural Legilimency is hard to talk about, because it's such a rare occurrence. I myself have only dealt with three cases in my fifty-five years of working." He adjusts his spectacles. "From what I am able to gather, Queenie is a rather strong example, and she has clearly been showing signs from an early age, from what you have told me. I'm afraid that there's not much we can do for now, because until her magic begins to mature she's not going to be able to control it much, and even then it's not a sure thing."

Mama grabs Father's hand tightly. "What can we do?"

"Keep triggers to a minimum," he says immediately. "The worst thing for a developing Legilimens is strong negative emotion, as they are unable to counter it. Especially from very strong minds like your own; powerful witches and wizards tend to project their emotions more strongly. Beyond that..." The man shrugs. "I would suggest the entire family learn Occlumency, but whether that will help in the long run remains to be seen."

* * *

Occlumency helps. For awhile.

Queenie doesn't understand why her parents are suddenly so closed to her, why they feel like there's nothing there when she walks into rooms with them. She can feel the tears building behind her eyes because it feels like they've pulled away—like she's done something wrong and that they don't want her there anymore.

She reaches out, once. Her mother is across the room making dessert for Tina's tenth birthday celebration when she touches her.

Mama drops the dish she's holding with a cry, and bread goes scattering across the floor as it shatters.

She turns wide eyes to her daughter, unmindful of the debris at her feet. "Queenie?"

"Mama," she says tearfully, knowing she's done something wrong. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"

"Shh, pumpkin," she says as she rushes forward, her wand waving negligently to begin cleaning up the spilled dish and heal it. Her arms come around her daughter. "It's alright, darling."

"It's not!" she says loudly. "I did something wrong and I don't know what!"

"What do you mean?"

"You went away!" she wails, feeling nothing from Mama and knowing it's her fault.

"We haven't gone anywhere, sweetheart."

Queenie shoves out of her mother's hold and backs across the kitchen. "You went away! I can't feel you anymore! What did I do wrong?"

Her mother looks stricken. "It's not like that, Queenie—"

Queenie shakes her head and backs away further. "You left and even though you're here you're not here anymore!"

Before her mother can say another word, she's gone.

* * *

They explain natural Legilimency to her the next day. Her parents sit her down in the parlor after lunch and just lay everything out.

She's a smart girl. She knows what this means.

It means she's been breaking into their heads without permission for years. That they finally got sick of it and blocked her out because they didn't like it.

It's all her fault.

She asks them how she can stop. They can't tell her.

So she keeps doing it, but she can feel a little bit of pain every time she identifies an emotion that isn't hers at a family gathering, every time she feels the empty blankness where her father's bright joviality used to be, every time she prods the empty space where Mama's warmth once burned.

They say it's because they don't want to hurt her. Queenie knows this is hurting her _more_.

Tina is the only bright spot that stays. Mama says they're all learning Occlumency, and that Tina should be able to not hurt her either, but either Tina is not very good at it or she's being how she always is.

She's caring about Queenie first.

So Queenie latches on to her sister's bright mind, the quick wit and the bright smiles that flash from her mouth to her mind and back again without thought, without hesitation. She rests her forehead against her sister's shoulder when they're reading together in one bed, and lets the images from Tina's mind narrate the story beside her voice. She watches the thoughts skip and jump from one brilliant idea to another and breathes just a little bit easier.

At least Tina doesn't want her to stop. At least Tina isn't scared of her.

* * *

Then comes Ilvermorny.

They didn't think it would be a problem. Queenie hasn't had an incident in years, ever since they discovered the cause of her fits and took steps to fix them. There have been problems, of course, but that's what happens when your child can read the minds of every person who walks through your door and sometimes the things she sees aren't really the best.

(She asks her mother's coworker from the hospital if she's got two husbands, when the couple comes over for dinner one evening. The resulting argument has the family politely asking the couple to leave, before the tears on Queenie's face have even had a chance to fall.

They don't get a lot of guests over after that. Queenie isn't sure if she likes it better that way or not, because some things should not be seen by little children's brains.)

But Ilvermorny doesn't give them pause, doesn't make them hesitate, because Queenie has wanted desperately to go ever since Tina went off in her first year and came back with stories and images for her that were so much brighter than the little house that her parents have barely let her leave for years now. (She knows it's because they're scared. That's something that started to leak over after her first accidental magic. She knows she's getting stronger, can feel it when the emotions wash over her almost like they're her own now, when the images are brighter and more detailed and she can start to see things even through her parents' shields. She knows she's getting stronger, and they don't.)

(She doesn't tell them. It's easier than seeing the horror on their faces when they think she's invading their privacy again.)

But Ilvermorny.

Queenie barely makes it through the welcoming feast before the chattering minds, the images thrown left and right and upside-down and the emotions screaming around hundreds of little brains finally opens her into a black pit, and she tumbles down.

* * *

It's called psychic overload, and when Queenie wakes up in the infirmary with an odd floating feeling in her limbs and feeling like her head is stuffed full of twisting snakes, she knows something is wrong.

The nurse gives her a kind smile and some words, but Queenie can't listen to her. Can't hear a word she's saying because she's still stuck under a pile of hurt excitement anxiety happiness sadness—

* * *

The next time she wakes, her mind is quiet. And she's the only one in it.

Her mother is beside her bed, holding her hand. Her father is arguing with the Headwoman.

"I'm afraid it's not possible to teach every student Occlumency, Mr. Goldstein," the woman is saying. "I understand your concerns, but it's just no feasible. There are so few people who have a proficiency for it, it wouldn't even be helpful."

"Then what do you suggest we do?" he asks darkly. "I can't in good conscience let my little girl suffer like this every time she walks into a classroom."

"I understand," the Headwoman repeats, and sounds like she means it. (Queenie doesn't actually know if she does. She can't tell anything when she only has her eyes and ears to rely on.)

"May I make a suggestion?" the nurse asks.

* * *

Queenie spends her first year at Ilvermorny on an increasing variety of psychic suppression potions.

The nurse says that they're experimental, that there's been successful trials of it in Britain and that it's been helpful to other natural Legilimens and seers.

Queenie says that they're the worst thing that's ever happened to her.

But they work.

(It feels like she's missing a limb, like they've plucked the eyes right out of her head and told her to see with her toes, and she can't tell what anyone is saying because how are you supposed to do that with just what they _say_ , but they work.)

They're constantly changing, constantly modifying dosages and timing. She spends the entire first week in a blurry haze, unable to remember anything she's been taught, and the following week alternating between odd blackouts and overwhelming moments of LOUD.

It takes a month to get the right combination, and after that it works for a few months before it stops.

Then the whole process starts again.

They call in a specialist over the summer.

"She's getting stronger," says the man, the same who diagnosed her condition years ago and did nothing besides tell her family to block her out. (Queenie tries not to be bitter.) (She fails.) "The dosages don't work for very long because her abilities override them."

"So what can we do?" Her father asks, and she's starting to get very tired of that statement. He's been asking it for years.

The specialist sighs. "I think we need to hire someone to train her to harness her abilities."

Mama wrings her hands. "Is that going to be expensive?" she asks.

The man shrugs. "I can't tell you, Mrs. Goldstein; but I can say that without help, Queenie will not be able to return to school."

* * *

Two weeks later, Mr. Parson walks through their front door.

He's a weedy old man, looking more skeletal than human and he has long long fingers that look like they would be very good at playing the piano. (Queenie knows. Tina has long long fingers and they are very good indeed for playing the piano.)

And his mind is like a glass lake, quiet and calm and she can read almost nothing from him.

"Good afternoon. You must be Queenie," he says, in a creaky old voice, when Mama introduces him after lunch. His voice carries nothing new to her, and she cocks her head to one side as she stares at him.

"You're blank," she says curiously. "But you're still there."

The man looks supremely pleased, if the little smile on his face says anything. The glass lake ripples ever so slightly, and she can feel his amusement. "Good, good," he croaks. "This will go well."

Queenie isn't so sure, but one look from Mama says that she has to try.

* * *

Mr. Parson teaches her how to float.

It takes a week of meeting for several hours a day before she asks. She hates that she can get almost nothing out of him but a few ripples, like there's something waiting just under the surface of the glass lake but she'd have to dive down deep to get there, and her reading has said that diving down in impolite.

"How do you do that?"

Mr. Parson cocks his head. "Do what, my dear?"

"The lake."

His eyes twinkle slightly. "Oh Queenie, it's called floating."

* * *

She floats.

By the time she takes the passages to Ilvermorny and steps out into the dining hall, she can feel herself drifting around, on top of everything.

It's simple, Mr. Parson had said. It was just taking everything that you hear, everything that you feel, and scooping it into a dish. A little dish, if you want, if you want to start that way, but a bigger one, as big as a lake, if you can pull it off after awhile. It takes practice. It takes courage. But after awhile, you fill that dish with everything you feel and hear and think and then let it settle.

And you don't let it stop settling. The point is that nothing can disturb it.

It takes practice, yes. It takes an entire summer of practice, of ignoring Tina's invitations to go out and play, of listening to her parents over dinner but saying nothing as she takes the thoughts they're thinking and lets them settle.

She floats on top.

When she gets back to Ilvermorny, it takes longer to float. It takes more concentration, at first, and she lets her eyes drift afar and her hands settle on her lap and goes still whenever she can feel the ripples rising higher into waves.

They start calling her crazy.

She knew that a long time ago, but that's not something that bothers her.

(A group of fourth years try to tell her that seeing into other people's minds without their permission is a breach of privacy, that she had best learn to control her wandering brain before someone gets _hurt_.

Tina tells them that being able to see her face is a breach of privacy, and they'd best control their wandering eyes before they lose them. Then she follows through, like Tina does best.

No one bothers Queenie after that. And she only thinks about how they're probably right twice a week or less.)

As the years pass and she spends more time around her peers, floating gets a little easier. By the time she graduates, she barely knows how to dive anymore.

(It was sink or swim; she chose the third option and now it's all she knows.)

* * *

She gets her job at MACUSA as easy as breathing.

It was in following Tina that she decided to go into government work; her sister was in the Auror corps, successful and happy and more than willing to help people. Queenie admires that, like she admires everything about Tina.

(Tina is still the only one who doesn't seem to mind when she reads her, doesn't seem to care that her mind is not her own. Queenie lets Tina's thoughts and feelings make more ripples than most, because they've never in her life hurt her and she loves Tina like she loves her own soul.)

The interview is easy; the moment they see that she's a natural Legilimens, they stop asking questions. They stop asking qualifications. Apparently being able to see issues before they arise is something very valuable in a secretary. (Queenie wants to be angry about that, but she's not really. She's floating.)

Before she knows it, she's six years into a position she's still not sure she wants, because even if she doesn't want to be out doing the violent things that Tina does, she doesn't really want to be sitting behind a desk doing busywork and occasionally telling her boss when someone is a little too angry before a meeting.

And then Tina comes home one evening and Queenie _hurts_.

She feels the breath pulled from her lungs as waves move across her mind like a storm, buckling and washing across all of her carefully-won calm and serenity. She feels her knees give out under her, feels the cry fall from her lips, feels Tina's hands on her arms and her voice in her ears.

"Queenie, what's wrong?"

"That boy," she whimpers, tears already running down her face. "Oh, Tina, that poor boy!"

Tina puts her hands on Queenie's face, forcing her to look forward. Tina rests her forehead against her sister's. She knows that there isn't anything she can do, so there's no point in blocking Queenie out.

"And you!" Queenie gasps. "Oh, no! No!" The tears are coming stronger now, faster and harder as she realizes what Tina has done; what's happened to her career, to her _life_!

The sisters sit together in a crumpled heap as they sob together.

* * *

Things change, a little.

Tina doesn't come home feeling like triumph and success anymore. Queenie can taste the misery on her, the pain, the self-recrimination every time she walks through the door at the end of the day. She can feel the burning anger that causes ripples every time it rears its head, can hear the desire for justice.

Queenie knows that justice is a long time in coming. She tries not to let it bother her.

She floats a little more determinedly. It's easier that way.

* * *

Two months later, Tina comes through the door with a Brit and a no-maj.

Queenie isn't sure what to think when her lake ripples in a way she's never felt before the moment she feels the no-maj's mind touch hers.

She's never had a chance to be this close to one. They don't really have a reason to be at the MACUSA office, after all, and there's very little time that Queenie spends out on the streets without having someone else to concentrate on (usually Tina).

But this no-maj. His mind is beautiful.

She can't describe it, doesn't know if she really wants to try, because she's seen a lot of minds in her years and she hasn't really had reason to categorize them. But this man is so bright and burning and hopeful that she can't help but be drawn to him.

The ripples get a little bigger every moment she spends in his presence, but they're not scary in the way they always have been before. These ripples feel different.

When he and the Brit—Newt, Newt Scamander, and his mind sounds funny just like all Brits' do and she can't really spare it the extra attention right now—leave the house, she feels it. The ripples calm, and she can almost feel the no-maj (Jacob, his name is Jacob and he's beautiful) getting farther and farther away.

She lets Tina know mostly because she wants to get him back.

* * *

Later, when Queenie grabs Jacob's hand in the MACUSA office and drags him around a corner, she feels the ripples in her mind settle into a strange sort of quivering quiet, and she feels that translate into her bones. Something settles, something right, and she can't help but reach out to his mind in a way that she hasn't before.

Jacob's mind, when she dives, is even more beautiful than his surface thoughts were, and she marvels at the hopes and dreams and big ideas that fill his head with such hopeful light that she feels the warmth on her skin. He has dark places, everyone does, but she can see that he's using his light to cover those, to make them less important, and she can't help but marvel.

When he lets go of her hand, it doesn't go away.

* * *

Newt Scamander is clearly a man with problems, and Queenie has seen many of those. But his mind is different than those, holds itself as oddly as he holds his body, slightly apart from everyone else. She can't help but relate it to the creatures he seems to care so much about, especially when he deflects the thoughts of Leta Lestrange as easily as one would deflect a thrown object. His mind turns from it, stuffs it away in such a way that it simmers below the surface and doesn't intrude on his thoughts anymore.

When he asks her not to read his mind, she wishes she could. Just so that he'd feel a little less like flinching all the time.

(Queenie thinks he could probably learn how to float, too. What he's doing isn't too far off, but maybe he's better at swimming than she is.)

* * *

The moment Jacob steps out into the rain, letting it wash over him, she can almost feel his mind washing clean of them.

Of her.

She can't stop, won't stop, as she steps forward and lays her lips on his. She feels the last quiver of his awareness of her rippling across her mind, feels some of her control slip because she can feel the very moment that she disappears from his mind.

And as she pulls away, it feels like she's ripping herself in two.

* * *

It takes months for the rippling to calm, for her to regain the same calm and serenity that she's enjoyed for years. She can still feel something below the surface, waiting to break free, and she doesn't know how to fix it.

She feels the loss in Tina when she returns from taking Newt to the shipyard, but it's not the same. Not quite.

Tina never knew Newt's mind, and Queenie's starting to think that that makes all the difference. (Because, just like walking and talking and reading, it's much easier to learn something when there's someone else learning it at the same time. Love seems to work the same way.)

So when Tina pulls her out of bed one morning and says "Jacob Kowalski's bakery is opening today. I think you should go," Queenie wonders if maybe Tina's got a bit of Legilimency in her blood as well.

Queenie goes, because how can she not?

(And if the ripples start up again, if her body quivers the moment she sees Jacob's smile and sees something in his mind that might be the start of something she thought she lost forever, she doesn't mind.

It's not a storm. It's a change. And it's not too hard to float if he's holding her hand.)


End file.
